ATOM Feed

Setting up a Gentoo container under lxc - notes (Feb 2012)

Posted on: Mon 13 Feb 10:48:31 2012 under technology

For anyone who is trying to set up a Gentoo container under lxc manually, and not having any luck:

  • Set rc_sys="lxc" in /etc/rc.conf in your container
  • Manually create /dev/pts
  • and /dev/shm
No comment(s) for this entry :, more...

Configuring Racoon on FreeBSD to connect to a Cisco IPSec VPN

Posted on: Sat 18 Jun 11:46:51 2011 under technology

Traditionally the third-party client of choice for connecting to Cisco IPSec based VPNs on Unix has been vpnc. Unfortunately, while it connects successfully in my situation, there were issues with vpnc being unable to hold a stable connection. racoon is used as the Cisco VPN client on Mac OS X, which is very reliable. This document will detail configuring racoon to connect to a Cisco VPN on FreeBSD.

No comment(s) for this entry :,,, more...

Recipe: 'Gentooize' an existing virtual server (VPS)

Posted on: Sat 05 Feb 11:02:04 2011 under technology

I was testing an OpenVZ VPS from a provider who didn't have any Gentoo installation images, so I wanted to replace the Debian installation provided with a Gentoo one. It needed to be done entirely over SSH (with the SolusVM serial console to augment it).

No comment(s) for this entry : more...

HOWTO: HostAP (Master) mode for Ralink rt73 USB wifi

Posted on: Sun 21 Nov 11:23:17 2010 under technology

Here is how I managed to get my Ralink-based WIFI stick working in access point mode with WPA encryption.

  • Hardware used: TP-Link TL-WN321G
  • System: Gentoo

Read on for more..

1 comment(s) for this entry :, more...

Blackberry WiFi connectivity issues with some routers i.e OpenWRT

Posted on: Mon 08 Nov 02:27:31 2010 under technology

Got a Blackberry? Having trouble getting the POS to access servers over WiFi? Connects but can't ping the Blackberry from other hosts on the same wireless network?

The issue appears to be a buggy WMM mode on the Blackberry and/or access point chipset (Atheros or Broadcom).

On OpenWRT powered access points/routers this can be fixed by disabling WMM mode.

Add

option wmm 0
under config wifi-iface in /etc/config/wireless. Power cycle, and it will work!
1 comment(s) for this entry :,,, more...

MacGuyvering: Installing a handbrake snapshot on Gentoo

Posted on: Tue 13 Jul 13:38:10 2010 under technology

So, you want to encode some video, and run Gentoo, but the handbrake ebuild either doesn't work or is too scary. They only have packages for Ubuntu or Fedora, but don't despair, we can use the Ubuntu package on Gentoo with a bit of detective work.

# Rebuild udev with extras so libgudev is present
echo "sys-fs/udev extras" >> /etc/portage/package.use
emerge udev

# Get the latest handbrake nightly build for ubuntu
cd /tmp
wget http://ppa.launchpad.net/stebbins/handbrake-snapshots/ubuntu/pool/main/h/handbrake/handbrake-gtk_svn3428ppa1~lucid1_i386.deb
ar x handbrake-gtk_svn3428ppa1~lucid1_i386.deb data.tar.bz2

# Extract it
cd /
tar -jxvf /tmp/data.tar.bz2

The technique of extracting data.tar.gz or data.tar.bz2 out of the .deb will work for other .deb-only binaries you can find as well

No comment(s) for this entry :,, more...

Completely unscientific Amazon EC2 benchmarks

Posted on: Sat 15 May 15:27:58 2010 under technology

Performed on the us-west cluster on spot instances using Geekbench

  • m1.small - 1497
  • m1.large - 2897
  • MacBook Pro i5 520M 2.4GHz - 4728
  • Core Solo 1.66GHz - 1562
  • Core Duo 1.60GHz - 1894

Honestly, the only thing good about m1.small and m1.large is spot instance pricing and loads of RAM. Otherwise GoGrid (which I've used myself) and Rackspace Cloud Servers seem to be much better

No comment(s) for this entry :,, more...

HOWTO: Get Calendar application on Android emulator

Posted on: Sat 15 May 03:52:47 2010 under technology

While the Android Calendar application is part of the source code for Android, it is not included in the SDK Emulator image.

It turns out this is for a rather good reason: They are useless on their own. Android Calendar is tied into Google Apps. You can't have a standalone calendar.

In the hope these instructions will help somebody else:

  1. Get the Android source code and build it
  2. The Calendar.apk and CalendarProvider.apk files are in out/target/product/generic/system/app/
  3. You can install these into the emulator using adb install <filename>

UPDATE (18th May):Here are the two APK's for those interested:

1 comment(s) for this entry :,, more...

Virtualization on Linux without extreme kernel modifications: lxc

Posted on: Fri 02 Apr 12:07:42 2010 under technology

There are multiple ways one can run multiple instances of Linux on a server, from entire system virtualization such as VMware, Xen (to a lesser extent) to operating system level virtualization such as UML, OpenVZ and Linux-VServer.

The last three require some kernel magic that isn't in mainline kernels. Linux-VServer (and probably OpenVZ) needs a lot of kernel modification.

Other operating systems ship similar 'containerisation' mechanisms as standard, notably Solaris Containers and FreeBSD jails.

1 comment(s) for this entry :,, more...

Poking around on a Mifare card: LibNFC crash course

Posted on: Sun 07 Feb 09:02:11 2010 under technology

libnfc is a library for communicating with ISO14443 RFID tags. You might know these things for their use in smart card ticketing systems such as Oyster, Octopus, Snapper and myki. But they are also present in other forms such as photocopy cards, student ID's, building access controls* and passports. Two forms of ISO14443 dominate: Felica, which debuted in Hong Kong's Octopus RFID ticket and spread across Asia soon after, and Mifare, which dominates just about everything else.

Full tutorial below the fold
1 comment(s) for this entry :, more...

Looking for something?

Use the form below to search the site:

Blogroll

Like what you see? Visit these sites